


How To Get Over A Breakup

by JellyfishQueenie



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Break Up, M/M, Poetry, Post-Break Up, rupi kaur
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-07
Updated: 2016-06-07
Packaged: 2018-07-12 22:18:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7124536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JellyfishQueenie/pseuds/JellyfishQueenie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is Rupi Kaur's poem from "milk and honey," it's such a great book and her poetry is fantastic. So here you are, Oikawa Tooru, after your breakup.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How To Get Over A Breakup

to do list (after the breakup): 

1\. take refuge in your bed. 

You’re sitting in a cocoon of blankets in your bed. You’re not laying down or sleeping, you’re sitting with your legs crossed in front of you and you’re hunched over with a collage of blankets covering your visage. You’re thinking to yourself, how did he just get up and leave? _How?_

2\. cry. till the tears stop (this will take a few days) 

There were fights, sure. You’ve always fought, but you’ve always relied on each other since you were kids. How long have you known each other? You feel your eyes start to swell, they sting. Your eyesight loses its clarity and you try not to let the tears escape from your eyes but there are puddles on your eyelids _begging_ to be let free. You blink. The tears stream down your face. Iwaizumi never let you cry like this, he hated seeing you cry like this. He never cried, even within your worst fights. He’d just walk out of your apartment and slam the door behind him. He would _never_ let you cry like this. 

3\. don’t listen to slow songs. 

You finally shed your cocoon of blankets, but you’re still sitting on the bed. You let your head roll on your shoulders and you stare out the window. It’s beautiful out. You reach for your phone and go to your music. What songs do you even have that don’t remind you of Iwaizumi? Songs that aren’t about love, songs that aren’t slow, you need songs that have a catchy beat. You skip to a playlist you use at parties, music pumps through the speaker that sits across the room. Some of these songs still remind you of Iwaizumi. 

4\. delete their number from your phone even though it is memorized on your fingertips. 

Your phone is still in your hands. Your fingertips are callused from decades of playing volleyball. You slide your fingers across your address book until you get to his name. _Iwa-chan <3_. You changed your name in his phone so it didn’t say _shittykawa_ anymore, he only let you put in Oikawa, not even Tooru. You click on his number. A picture pops up along with his number. Your thumb hovers over the trashcan button. You finally click it. Does it matter? You have his number memorized from nights your phone died and you lost him in a crowd at a party. Why did you guys even go to parties? It always ended in a fight, or both of you in the same bed, but that happened most nights anyway. You cry at the action of throwing the number away even though it’s second nature for your fingers to dial his number. 

5\. don’t look at old photos. 

The music moves you. You eventually stand up out of bed. Your legs feel so weak, how long has he left you in bed? It doesn’t matter, you walk anyway, the beat of the music encouraging you. You walk to your dresser. Framed and frameless pictures of you and Iwaizumi cover the top of your dresser. You turn them all face down because you’ll start crying even more if you stare at his face for too long. Above your dresser hangs a mirror. A mirror only reflects what’s in front of it, but you don’t recognize yourself. Your hair is greasy from going days without a shower, and it’s flippancy is completely gone and just hangs in your face. The bags under your eyes are an ugly purple, reminding you of all the sleep you’ve lost, reminding you that the sleep you have gotten was from crying so much. Who are you? 

6\. find the closest ice cream shop and treat yourself to two scoops of mint chocolate chip. the mint will calm your heart. you deserve the chocolate. 

You don’t care what your hair looks like. You put on a hoodie, it smells like Iwaizumi but you don’t care right now. You leave your apartment and head out into the world. It isn’t long that you reach an ice cream shop beckoning you to come in. So you do. You walk into the ice cream shop. You order two scoops of mint chocolate chip in a cup. The first bite of ice cream cools the simmering fire in your heart that was lit from Iwaizumi leaving you. But the chocolate kindly lets you know that Iwaizumi was not the sweetest taste that could be left on your tongue. You feel refreshed even though your hair hasn’t been washed in days and you can’t even remember the last time you ate. 

7\. buy new bedsheets. 

Feeling something refreshing as mint ice cream inspired you to buy something even more refreshing. New bedsheets. You buy white. And when you get home, and you pull them out of the package, they’re even more refreshing, so clean and purifying. You toss the old sheets on the floor and put on your brand new white sheets. The stale smell of Iwaizumi sits in the air. 

8\. collect all the gifts, t-shirts, and everything with their smell on it and drop it off at a donation center. 

How did Iwaizumi have his own specific smell? The smell of him on your hoodie finally hits you. You take it off. You throw the hoodie in the pile of your old sheets. You tear through your closet, tears streaming down your face, and you pick out all of Iwaizumi’s clothes. Clothes that you adopted as your own, and clothes that he left here. You pick out your own clothes that smell of him. Iwaizumi never gave you many gifts, but you pick up the things he did buy you, and toss it into the pile. You pick the pile up using the sheet as a bag and walk to a thrift store. 

9\. plan a trip. 

On your way to the thrift store, you think about how nice it would be to go someplace. Someplace foreign. You need to get away, no, not to get away, but so that when you come back home, things might seem normal even though Iwaizumi isn’t there. Maybe Spain, Spain seems nice, a complete change for a week, come back home and things will be normal. You’ll leave in a week, that will give you enough time to pack and buy plane tickets and you’ll leave in a week. 

10\. perfect the art of smiling and nodding when someone bring their name up in conversation. 

“Oh, Oikawa, I just ran into Iwaizumi this morning.” 

You freeze. You look up. It’s a girl that you and Iwaizumi had class with. She was nice, but right now, you don’t care if she was nice or not. Your day was going fine with the mint chocolate chip ice cream, and the new sheets, and the getting rid of everything that smells like _Iwaizumi_. Now here she is, a girl that has no idea that Iwaizumi flipped the dining room table during your last big fight, that he sat down on the couch while you cried on the floor, that he walked up to you and told you that _he was leaving you_. She has no idea, but you resent her for asking. _How could she._ You smile. And you nod your head. 

“That’s nice.” 

11\. start a new project. 

At the thrift store, you find old window panes. You buy them. You also buy paint. You go home. You paint the window panes. They’ll look nice with the sun shining through them. Why have you never picked up arts and crafts before? 

12\. whatever you do. do not call. 

Painting was nice, however, painting has the word pain in it and so does your heart, your mind, and your body. You’re lying on the floor. Your phone is in your hand, no, you’re not looking at it. _You don’t understand what you did wrong._ Your eyes swell with tears. Looking at your phone, you ignore all the texts from your “friends,” they don’t know anything. They’re probably all hanging out with Iwaizumi. Maybe you should call him. It’s been a few days. See if he really means it. You sit up, punch his number in your phone, and your thumb hovers over the call button. Maybe you missed a number. 

13\. do not beg for what does not want to stay. 

The phone rings three times and you know that he picks up. There’s no answer, you speak up, “Iwaizumi?” You wait. You hear him sigh. You feel all your anxiety bunch up in your chest and you start sobbing. _You’re pathetic,_ you tell yourself. You take a deep breath which is broken up by you sobbing and you whisper, “Please, Iwaizumi, please come back. We-we- _we_ can make it work. I’ll be better. I don’t know why I did all those things to you.” You don’t know what you did to him. You’re not even sure you did anything to him that made him want to leave. He finally speaks up, he tells you he can’t. You sit on the phone silent for a moment, and then he hangs up after he says goodbye one last time. 

14\. stop crying at some point. 

He’s found someone better. You just know it. All your life, you’ve been told that you’re irreplaceable, but you’re so easily replaced. You shouldn’t have called him. _How stupid of you to think that he’d want to get back with you._ Maybe he will at some point, he might decide that he still loves you. Maybe you should take a hint. No, you should stop crying for yourself. You couldn’t cry anymore even if you wanted to. Now you’re sprawled out on the floor. You toss your phone away from you. You didn’t miss a single number. 

15\. allow yourself to feel to feel foolish for believing you could’ve built the rest of your life in someone else’s stomach. 

It’s your last year of college. You’ll see Iwaizumi on the volleyball team. You’ll see him on campus. But. You won’t see him in your apartment again. You won’t see him after you graduate. You won’t see him naked and hovering over top of you ever again. You might miss that, but you’re an idiot for believing that you’d spend the rest of life with him, building it around him. You won’t have to walk on eggshells around him anymore, eggshells that felt like shattered glass. You- who are you? Who is Oikawa Tooru? You are. You are Oikawa Tooru, you are someone who is no longer dependent on Iwaizumi Hijame. You know who you are. 

16\. breathe.

**Author's Note:**

> This was one of my favorite poems from "milk and honey," Rupi Kaur is an amazing poet, the to do list is all hers, so I hope my story did some justice.


End file.
